Introduction

The use of new technology has and will continue to affect accounting and accountants.  Accountants in both public and private practice currently use many different technologies and will continue using them in the future.  Accounting educators need to ensure that future accountants have been exposed to as many new technologies as possible during their college career.  All accounting students need to be prepared to use new technologies immediately upon entering the workforce.  Today, many different courses do require students to use technology in completing assignments and projects.  This is true of courses within the accounting curriculum as well as of courses from other departments.  Even though courses today require students to use bits and pieces of new technology, very few courses relate the new technology to accounting related tasks.  Accounting educators need a series of projects that can be assigned to accounting students which will expose the students to a variety of new technologies while also requiring the students to become more knowledgeable of the Accounting profession. 

Some of the new technologies that accounting students should be exposed to include the Internet, Data Base Management Systems, Expert Systems, and Neural Networks.  Brown and Murphy (1990), in a review of expert systems used in public accounting, discuss thirty-seven different audit-related expert systems that were either in use or under development by the largest accounting firms.  Those expert systems were being used to assist in tax planning, compliance work, audit planning, materiality decisions, and many other areas.  In addition, the IRS is using expert systems to assist in analyzing tax returns to determine possible tax fraud.  Many other private companies, such as IBM and American Express, also use expert systems to increase their competitive advantage.  This project involved the development of several pedagogical tools that accounting professors can use in the classroom to aid in teaching the subject domain of the course while exposing the students to technologies they will use during their careers.  The idea behind developing the specific pedagogical tools was that accountants today use an ever increasing array of technology in performing their duties and accounting graduates need to have been exposed to these technology from an accounting perspective prior to embarking upon their careers.  In the past, these technologies were self‑learned by many accountants as the need to use them came about in practice.  This was an acceptable approach to learning these technologies in the past, however today students who are entering the accounting profession need to have many skills when they hit the road. 

With the increased amount of accounting specific material that is being covered in the accounting curriculum today, most accounting professors don't have the time to teach students how to use the many different technologies.  This has resulted in a reliance upon computer‑oriented professors to teach our accounting students how to use computer technology.  Since most of these courses are taught from a computer perspective, accounting students learn the basics from a non‑accounting perspective and therefore, do not learn how to apply the technologies to accounting‑oriented situations.  This places our accounting graduates at a disadvantage when entering a work force where employers have expectations of the 'new' graduate being prepared to use the 'new' technologies to help solve accounting related tasks.  Some employers even expect the accounting graduate to be proficient enough to train others in the office on the 'new' technologies.

It is a fact that today’s student has been exposed to more new technologies than students in the past, however, this is probably not true within most accounting curriculum.  In most accounting curriculum, students have most probably not ever used the technologies for a specific accounting problem.  The only exposure that most will receive is while taking their Accounting Information Systems (AIS) course.  This lack technology use in the accounting courses definitely needs to change.  We are doing our students and their future employers a disservice by not requiring the use of computer technology in the accounting classroom.  Our students will graduate and begin their careers without being exposed to material that will become an everyday part of their work experience.

The three reasons that keep surfacing as to why new technologies are not presented to accounting students in their accounting courses deal with time, practicality, and fear.  Time is most probably the most predominate reason given by accounting professors for not using computer technology in their accounting courses.  Most accounting courses in the accounting curriculum are already packed full.  To add any additional material, coverage of other material would have to be reduced or possibly eliminated.  This problem can only be addressed by the ability to provide the new technologies in the form of pedagogical tools.  This would require students to perform the necessary assignments and expose them to computer technology in the process.  The materials provided through this project provide this service to the professor.  The developed assignments serve to reinforce the accounting material while requiring the student to use computer technology in completing the assignments.